Perversion the Social Relation

26 Dennis Fosterthis conflict is to "reduce the Receptacle class to a condition of virtualidiocy": that is, children must find their bodies' enjoyment only throughservice to the City. One of the inadvertent outcomes of this practice isthat the Council of the Cities "produced ... races of ravening vampireidiots" (157).The denial of mortal limitation, as the story represents it, leads theelite to abuse power and turn away from the thought that derives fromrecognizing death. As sublime as the concept of soul may be, it iseasily adapted to a system that perpetuates those who are spirituallydeserving, which the powerful always consider themselves to be. Perhapshistory could have developed otherwise. Cities locates the "basicerror of the Transmigrants" in their desire to by-pass the "basic trauma"of conception. Conception, after all, requires the most fundamentalloss of integrity in the splitting of DNA and a rejoining of sexuallyhalvedchromosomes. The particular result of conception is fundamentallyuncontrollable, subject to the chaotic slippage of dynamic systemsand tending toward a purposeless complexity. Evolution—viable geneticmutation—proceeds for the good of neither the individual parent nor thespecies, but, like an artist of serendipity, will try anything, even thougha stray "success" (it lives!) may destroy everything that came before.The Transmigrants, then, are justified in fearing conception, as shouldall cultures that exalt stability over change. The ultimate collapse ofthe Cities during the radioactive period of the Red Night ("a time ofgreat disorder and chaos") resulted from the introduction of mutation—change, complexity, and diversity—into a culture devoted to exactreplication. Conception, that is, is at odds with "spirit," the reputedessence of an individual ego. Something else within you, something inyou-more-than-you,works silently toward a future. Call it DNA, theDrives, the Human Virus: components of the body work without regardfor the spirit, soul, or individual body. But they are represented throughthe individual body as horrible and thrilling enjoyment, depicted in thisstory as orgasm; and enjoyment, unless it is channeled by culture, underminesall practices that depend on control—and what social practicesdo not?Burroughs suggests that one way of distinguishing cultures is by theway they control enjoyment. In a series of statements about the relationshipbetween what is true and what is permitted, the following claim